Police spend £82m talking to migrants

BRITAIN’S police forces are spending more than £75,000 a day on translators to deal with migrants.

Police spent £82.4million across the UK in the past three years communicating with foreign criminals []

They spent a mammoth £82.4million across the UK in the past three years communicating with foreign criminals, victims and witnesses who do not speak English.

The figure is almost 60 per cent up on the total spent in 2004, when the EU expanded, allowing tens of thousands more eastern Europeans to come to the UK.

At a time when an estimated 16,000 frontline officers face being axed to meet budget cuts, the sum is the equivalent of having 3,542 more constables on the beat spread over three years.

Yesterday there were calls for extra Government funding to cover the costs of investigating crimes involving non-English speakers.

Simon Reed, vice chairman of the Police Federation, said: “These costs are unreasonable and have a huge impact on forces. There have been pay freezes and job cuts because of a lack of money, but spending on translation is growing hugely.

Police spent £82.4million across the UK in the past three years communicating with foreign criminals

“It is something that has to be done but it is unfair to expect police to bear all the costs.”

Matthew Elliott, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “The taxpayer has a right to expect someone residing in Britain to learn to speak English.”

The figures, revealed in Freedom of Information requests, show that combined spending since 2008 amounts to £82,403,168 – an average of £1.5million per force. It covers face-to-face interpreters, phone translation services and printing costs, as well as travel abroad when searching for speakers of rare ­dialects.

The Met tops the league at £29.3million since 2008. West Midlands police paid £6million, followed by Thames Valley and West Yorkshire police at £3.3million each.

Yesterday, Thames Valley Police said translation costs were not an optional extra. “Many members of our community speak a wide variety of languages and we have a duty to serve them all,” a statement said.

The Ministry of Justice said: “We have announced that we will cut interpretation costs by at least £18million a year, while still ensuring high quality interpreters and translators are available to those in need.”